Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of

the Daily Bible

Podcast.

What's up, baseball?

What's up? What's up baseball?

Yeah. What's up baseball. That's what's up. I see that you're wearing your Texas Rangers hat.

Yes. They didn't win the other night, right? They're one and one. They won their, they lost their first game. Won their second game. Oh, okay. Cool. Good. Good for them. And that's all they've played so far as we record this.

The Dodgers right now, I could tell you their score right now. The Dodgers current game stats tell you exactly what sounds, you're Googling that on the fly. I'm the biggest Dodgers fan you've ever met, buddy. I see you wearing the Dodger jersey right now. That's right. Thank you Ape Kim for the hookup. I'm still, I, I saw in my closet today, I'm like, you know what, it's baseball season.

Yeah.

I should wear it. I, and it's funny 'cause I wore it and I went to go visit a friend for coffee this morning. Yeah. And I got myself in trouble. Because he's oh, you're wearing the Dodgers jersey. How about that game that happened the other day? I'm like, oh, shoot. You're like, it was a good game, right? What did you, what you should think about it? About that one pitch. I didn't know what to say, man. I was like, yeah, good. Bet you'll fly the flag. I will, man. I don't care. Yeah, I care. I'm one of the, I'm one of the people Are you do or Die Dodgers? That's what I always say. Are you? Yeah. Actually I think I'm a home team guy, so I think if you press me, I would say I'm a Texas fan, but I don't have a Texas Rangers jersey. We need to remedy that. I don't know. I don't have the desire to do it. Hey, we're gonna the Rangers game as a church though June 13th. We are. And I, I'm really excited about that. That was fun the last time we did it. Yeah, we will. Although I'm gonna show up at a certain time to make sure I don't have to pay for parking. Yeah. That seems shrewd. That's that's wise. This serpent. I missed it by 10 minutes. Yeah. Okay. So real quick. My, my roof had an issue last year. It was raining, it was leaking. I had to get someone to come to patch it up, yada, yada, yada. So we ended up getting late to this game and we pulled in, we're pulling into the parking lot and we see the guy taking the money and we're like, okay, here's what it is. And I don't know what the cost is. It's like 35, 40 bucks. Yeah. Something like that. Anyway, no big deal. This is stadium parking. We figured it. So we go inside, pay the money, we park, and as we get out of our van and start walking toward the stadium, all those people that were just there guarding the entrance, are packing up and leaving 10 minutes. We missed it. I could have gotten it for free. All I'm saying. So this time I might just park next to them and just wait for them to leave, and then I'll pull inside. Can you guys go? Yeah. Whenever you're done, guys. I'm ready to come inside.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, it'll be it'll be fun. It'll be great. The White Sox, it should be a fun game to go to. The White Sox are good, right? No. Great. No, they were the worst team in baseball last year. Oh. They set records for losing games last year. That's, that bodes well for us. Yeah. That's one of the

reasons why we were like, yeah, let's go to that game. Not like my Dodgers. They're four L Your Dodgers are four L. Yeah. My Dodgers are funny. I was following us back in Brooklyn days, honestly. Yeah. Hey, unrelated question, but one that I think is important In the Christian vernacular, we talk about something called the means of grace. You are pounding the table on this question. Literally. I have passion behind this question because I think it's so important. And I'm not sure that people understand it, so I want you to talk about the means of grace. What are they, what does the phrase itself mean? I've even, the other day we had this conversation with our leaders and we were asking questions about some of the Christianese that we use and saying what do we mean by that word? So let's talk about means of grace. Can you please elucidate for the for myself, elucidate, and our audience? Yeah. What are those? How do we, what do we

take from those things? Let's distinguish something right off the bat. I, if you ask somebody that question, who is a Catholic, they're, you're gonna get a different answer from what. You're about to hear from us. That's true. The Catholic Church holds that there are multiple means of grace. In other words, the way that grace is conveyed, hence means of grace. The way that we receive grace the Catholic church is going to include things like the sacraments, baptism, the Lord's Supper mass catechism, things like that, that they would say, these are our means of grace, whereby somebody receives grace. And that's why they would even argue if they're. If they're honest with themselves, that to really truly be saved, you have to be a Catholic. Otherwise you're not going to receive the all the grace that you need necessary to enter heaven. Oof. You may enter purgatory and there's o other things about that. Oof. But that's what they argue. Argue. And you believe that? No. Good. Not at all. So for us as believers, we would say the means of grace, first and foremost primarily is we receive grace through faith. Faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. That is the means of saving grace. But beyond that we do believe that there are means of grace. There are ways that we receive grace as Christians, and we would say certainly time in the word is one of those. We would say time and prayer is one of those I would even say. That there is grace that we receive as believers through our fellowship with one another, one another through our pursuit of godliness and sanctification. Th these are all means of grace. I would just distinguish them as they're not saving grace. Saving grace is not based on something that we do in order to receive that grace. Saving grace is simply our faith in Christ is what we receive saving grace through the means of. Ongoing grace in our life. Yeah. That can be experienced as the, we lean in more to the word, to prayer, to fellowship, to participation with other believers to growth in godliness. Those are all ways that we can receive grace from the Lord through our pursuit of those things. It's just not by going to church and having a priest stand up and say, I'm gonna convey this grace upon you through this ordinance. So then in terms of the

actual outworking of that idea. And the concept seems biblical. Does this mean then that I can. I can enjoy more or less of God's grace by my active and willing participation in those things. Is that what you're

saying? Yes, absolutely. And I, and let me explain you. You probably have all can felt this at some point in time when you feel like you're in a season, you're going, man, I just feel spiritually dry right now. And you look at your life and you're realizing I haven't been spending time in the word, I haven't been praying, I haven't been at church very much. I haven't been, around other believers very much. And so I feel like I'm distant from the Lord that we'll use language like that. And I think what we're experiencing there is we're experiencing a withholding of some of the grace of God that does come when we are pursuing him, the intimacy that we can feel with God. On the flip side, when we are spending time in the Word and we're praying a lot and we're around other believers, and you feel like, man I just feel like I'm really close with the Lord. Lord these days. I think that's an experience of the grace of God. That's that's more than the person that's been neglecting those things. Not in a salvific way, but in a relational way. I think there are different measures of grace that we can experience as believers. So

practically then, if I. D do more things. If I go to church more frequently, if I read my Bible more consistently, I pray, let's say I pray longer or I just pray more consistently is it true then that I would experience more of God's

grace trying to be brass acks here? Totally. Yeah. And that's where it comes down to the heart motive behind it. If we're pursuing these things, legalistically thinking there's an equation. If I'd add this, plus this equals grace or equals closeness with God, then that's not. What we're talking about. But the, these are all means that the spirit uses in our life to draw us closer to the Lord. And I think that's where we receive the idea of this additional grace being worked in our life is through the spirit working in our life, through the means that he uses to make us more like Christ. And that's gonna involve all of these other things there. So it's not

formulaic. That's an important qualification. It's not like you, you read your Bible for 30 minutes and you've acquired 30 minutes of God's grace or something like that. Totally. Yeah. It's not a one-to-one, but there is a, I don't know, there's a mystical outworking, there's a, there's an experiential component of God's grace, as I think, so as you work through these things. Yeah. That's huge. And that's an important part of what our faith is. We're not free grace. Theology people, we don't believe. You just sit back and let God happen to you, right? And wait for him to change you. We're not sitting back and just saying, Lord, please change me. And then. Just hoping that he does it. The Lord works through the means that he has given us to accomplish his saving purposes and even his sanctifying purposes. We believe that God is sovereign, but we believe that God's sovereignly, ordains means to his intended ends, and those means for us are gonna be some of the simple things that we tend to overlook. The Bible reading and the prayer and the going to church and singing everything that he commands are means of his grace. Even though a lot of them are commands, they're commands, right? But those commands are the same thing like. It's the same thing as if you were to say, Hey, drink water. Eat food. Yeah. Yes. They're commands, but they're commands that give us something as opposed to simply take something from us. A hundred percent. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's

good. That's helpful. Do you agree with everything I just said? Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said So we're gonna jump in, we're gonna jump into the Daily Bible reading judges three, four, and five is our thank you for agreeing with everything I just said, pastor pj, I appreciate that. I did not say that. I did not say that. But you did though. Before we get into chapter three you pointed out that I failed to really talk through the end of chapter two. And chapter two really sets up. Where we go. And so end of chapter two, verse 16, the Lord raised up judges who saved them outta the hand of those who plundered them. Verse 18, whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge. He saved them from the hand of their enemies 'cause he was with them all the days of the judge. And then verse 19, but whenever the judge died, they turned back and they were more corrupt than their fathers go going after other gods serving them. Bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. And so this is the pattern of the book of Judges. God's gonna raise up judges. And God's gonna see after the people had the judges deliver them, that they're gonna turn right back. And that's why it says that they were being tested by God with these judges. God was testing them by saying, I'm gonna give you deliverance. Is it gonna stick? And then when it didn't stick, they were delivered over into the hands of their enemies. The Book of Judges is so hard for us because you're gonna read through it. We're gonna finish the book in a matter of a couple weeks here maybe. If that. And it's gonna feel like it just flies by. But pay attention to the time markers in this book. So many times they're delivered over for multiple decades in their period of suffering. And then you'll have a judge raised up and you'll read about this judge and that judge will be a quick flash on the plan pan story, but that was multiple decades that they were under the reign of the judge. So pay attention to the time markers in the book of judges, just to get a sense for how much time is passing during this actual book here. Judges chapter three. Then we get into the initial situation here. It says, these are the nations. The Lord left to, to test Israel by them. That is all in Israel who had not experienced the wars in Canaan. And so there's these that are left behind here, the testing of Israel. They fail the test and it says there that they. Lived among the Canaanites. Verse five, verse six. Their daughters, they took to themselves for wives and they gave their daughters to their sons. This is a directly against the law of God. This is Moses had given them the clear instructions. Do not do this. You should not intermarry. So chapter three, they're intermarrying. Sure enough, that leads to the propagation of false worship and evil. Verse seven, the people of Israel did what was evil on the side of the Lord. That's a common refrain throughout the book of judges there. They're worshiping these false gods. God gets angry, sells them into the hand of Kush. Yeah, that guy. Yeah. You wanna give that one a shot? Pr I'm good. Okay. Yeah. Hai. Thyme King of Mesopotamia. Anyways, he, it sells him into the Mesopotamia King here and they serve him for eight years. So there's a time marker right there. Eight years. The first judge up is Othniel, and this is Othniel, the son-in-law of Caleb. And so Othal comes on the scene and the spirit of Lord is upon him. Notice verse 10. He judges Israel, he delivers Israel and the Lord land had rest. Verse 11, 40 years. So this is a quick story, but we're dealing with almost 50 years from verse seven to verse 11. And that's something that we need to to pay attention to. Verse 12, then we get the next judge up, one of the favorite judges of us. And this is the not politically correct judge situation because the people of Israel, again, verse 12, did what was evil on the side of the Lord. And the Lord strengthened lon, the king of Moab. So now the Moabites come against Israel because they had done what was evil and they are captured by the king of Moab, and they're subjected to the king of Moab for 18 years. Verse 13, God raises up another judge, Ehud, the left-handed judge. And this matters because. God is gonna use Ahab to go and deliver the people. He's gonna go request an audience with the king, and he's a left-handed judge, which was un which was unusual. So he straps a sword to his right thigh, which would not have been the place that a right-handed soldier would've kept his weapon. So probably when he's being searched before going into the king, they're searching his left thigh because that's where the weapons would've been kept. Not the le not the right thigh. Ah, hood goes in. He draws his sword after telling Eglin. He's got a secret message, stabs Eglin in the gut and it says Eglin. Verse 17 was a very fat man. Can't say that it says it in the Bible. I'm not. It's, this is what God's word says. He's a man of substance. He was a man. Okay, it says very fat is what it says there in verse 17. You're translate it to today though. They. Say it differently. I think maybe although the updates to the e sv they could have changed it. I don't think that was a change. Can you imagine? Oh, man. And anyways, it says that the fat closed over the blade. Verse 22. Oof. And ah, hood was down a sword after that one, probably a dagger more than a sword. He escapes. There's this somewhat humorous scene of the servants thinking that the king is in the bathroom, and then they go in and they find him dead. And this is what God does to deliver. The people of Israel from the hand of the Moabites there. This is gruesome. It is

gruesome. And I don't know, this is one of those explicit passages where it seems like there's details here that I don't need to know. It's interesting, but I'm curious as to why it's left in there. And you could say it's just historical recounting. Maybe it is. I don't know. It's just, okay. That's interesting because this is memorable. This is a part of the Bible that many people who've read the Bible, they know. Oh, that one, yes. Yeah. The very big king who's a man of substance, and the stuff came out after that. That's interesting. Why was that important to the Lord to preserve that for us? I don't know. I'm curious about it. Unless it's just the

humiliation of him, it, this is part of God's glory over, over him is saying, this is how humiliating this is. You're the king of the Moabites, but really this is your demise. Yeah. I, that, that's definitely true. It is humiliating and maybe that it is a. Simply that's true. But notice verse 30 again, the time marker. Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest for 80 years. And that's a long time. And you think, man, things are going well. Maybe we've turned the corner in the background. There's still the promises of the Abraham and Covenant that are coursing through the minds of the people now. They're wondering when is the full fulfillment of that? Is that now? Is that later? What's happening here? But they've got rest now from the oppression, at least for 80 years. But unfortunately, it's not gonna be. An 80 years of that's gonna last any longer than that because they're gonna rise up and they're gonna do evil again. But notice verse 31, it says after him, this is after Ehud was Shamgar, and Shamgar was another judge just briefly mentioned here. Kills 600 Philistines within Ox Godde and he also saved Israel. So this one's unique because we don't find out. When the Philistines attacked or what happened, but it seems like there was another hiccup in Israel's obedience there, and Shamgar was raised up in verse 31

or even how long it was. So this is interesting because then you start putting pieces together in terms of the timing of the judges and the numbers are hard to compute, at least because some of these guys don't have. Dates associated with them,

which is a challenge. Yeah it's speaking of challenge chapter four, we into a female judge, judge Deborah, not Judge Judy, but Judge Deborah close. Judge Deborah, she's raised up by the Lord because again, the people of Israel did evil in the side of the Lord. Verse one. And the Lord gives him this time into the hand of Jabin, the King of Canaan. And he's going to oppress them for 20 years, verse three. And so Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth was judging Israel at that time. Couple of notes here. Number one, she's not. A pastor, right? This is not the pastoral office. And so those that will say Deborah was a judge, so we should have female pastors. It's apples and oranges there. These are offices are not one and the same. And so for us to reach back and say this is an example of a female pastor, so we need to have female pastor, she wasn't a pastor, she was a prophetess. God used her to lead politically. Militaristically, even you could argue during the season for Israel, but I don't think we can draw the direct correlation between her and a pastoral office to make an argument, to say, this is reason why it's okay for us to have pastors who are women, especially in the New Testament, when we have explicit instructions against that. There's also signs here that we get into, including with Barack who of the fact that there was a dearth of godly and strong men. In the midst of Israel at this time, Barack, she says to Barack, she says, you need to go lead this army. And Barack says, I'm not going unless you come with me. Which is not a sign of bold, courageous leadership. And then she even calls him out for that and says, you know what the Lord's gonna give victory, but you're not gonna get the glory. The Lord's gonna give Cicero into the hand of a woman. So I think even Deborah at that point says, there's shame. This response and the fact that there aren't males that are present in Israel to stand up and lead the people, and God is instead using Deborah. And Deborah is a faithful leader and Deborah does great things for Israel and she's commendable for that. But here, this is a situation where I don't think it's right for us to say, look, Deborah was a female leader in Israel, so we should have female leaders in the church. I don't think it holds water to draw that connection there. It's also hard to use the Book of

Judges as a template for really anything. Because it's so riddled with this. Think about Israel's history to this point. This is not one of her high points. This is a place where she struggles and she's doing evil, and the period of the judges is just. It's difficult to say. Let's take this as a template if anything, and we're gonna say that the template is that we should follow the Lord's commands and do what he says and not stray from those things. I guess where the people might struggle is that the prophet's role seems to be one of the highest roles that God could give. I. Paul says later in the book of Ephesians that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and that he's given us now shepherds and teachers, which seems like then, okay if he's willing to give us women leaders who fall into the highest positions that the Old Testament afforded, why would he not do that under the New Testament covenant?

Yeah and I think when we consider profit, I think there are varying. Classes of prophets because as we get into the Book of Samuel, we're gonna find that Saul finds himself among the prophets. Now, this is a group of men or maybe men and women who we don't know, and they're not given a platform in Israel in the sense of they're not writing scripture either. They're not writing scripture, they're not authoritative in. In that same degree, in that same sense. So there are, there's a broad category when we talk about prophet, even that term can be applied to a lot of different people. So it simply says in the text, she was a prophetess. It's not, she was the prophetess of Israel. It's not that she's got a situation here where she's prophesying to the people of Israel the same way that Jeremiah or Isaiah or any of the other prophets do when they stand up and say, thus says the Lord, here's my instructions to you. I think we need to give room for the fact that the word prophet, I agree with you. There were some that God gave the title prophet and that put them in a very high position of authority over Israel. But there were others that were called prophets that didn't have that same position either. And I think that's what we're dealing with, probably here with Deborah.

Helpful.

Anyways the story here is that Barack is gonna lead the forces out, and he's gonna go after Cicero here. And Cicero is gonna flee and he flees on foot and ends up in the tent of jail. And jail is a woman who was not an Israelite, but apparently feared the Lord enough and or hated the. Pagan king enough that she took matters into her own hands. She coaxes them into sleep and she dispatches of them. We will just leave it that way. This is another gruesome death that we find here in the book of Judges and Jail is gonna be praised for that and commended for that. And that's really what chapter five is gonna be about. Deborah and Barack sing this song of the Lord's Deliverance. And and it says even insults some of the Israelite in this chapter, in, in verse 15 and 16, among the CLS of Ruben, there were great searchings. Why did you sit still among the sheep folds and hear the whistling for the flocks? Where were you? In other words, this is another indictment against the situation there in Israel that there were not. Strong godly leaders and warriors there to stand up. Verse 24, most blessed of women be jl, the wife of Hebrew, the Ken Knight of the tent dwelling women most blessed. So she's being praised here, recounts what she did, and again, why the song? Because the song was going to be something that stuck with people and remind them of God's faithfulness to deliver them even. Yeah, to their own Shame by the hand of JL into the future generations. Which

reminds us why we sing today. This is a biblical thing that we're doing that generations of believers have done from even the very beginning. This is evidence that singing is meant to be part of the Christian experience. Certainly the believers experience in general, but as a New Testament believer, we have much more to sing about. The enemy that's been defeated is not a wicked king, but the enemy of darkness and even death itself. Jesus has. Destroyed sin and death. He has risen. We now sing for reasons that are far better and far longer lasting than what they sang for here. So as you prepare to go to church today, I really hope you remember, or no yesterday. Yesterday, sorry. As you prepared to go to church next week. I hope you remember this, and remember to sing heartily because of what God has done. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's pray and we will be done with another episode, by the way. Oh, one more time. Marker there. Notice end of verse of chapter five. The lien had rest for 40 years again, so the time markers are just passing on by. As we get into the book, God help us to, to process these things, to understand them. There's a lot here as, even as Pastor Rod was saying, the book of judges is difficult for us to draw a lot of lasting principles out of. And yet we do see your mercy. We see your means of favor and even grace towards Israel. Even as we talked about at the beginning of this episode, means of grace that we experienced today, one of them being spending time in your word. And so God, we do ask that we would. Prioritize that, that we would not look at this formulaically and think that if I do this, then it's gonna automatically produce this. But that this would be truly that dynamic relationship that we enjoy between you, where you draw us nearer to you through our time in the word and through our time in prayer to you. God, I pray that we would spend time reading your words, spend time in the di daily Bible. Reading and then be prompted to pray and prompted to respond in prayer to you, thanking you, acknowledging your truth. Even bringing our questions to you and saying, God, help me to understand this because at face value I'm lost right now. It's fair for us to be able to come before you and seek that guidance and seek that wisdom. God, we thank you for our church and we pray for a great week in front of us. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Go Dodgers. Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said bye.

Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said